Vecna’s BEAR robot as employed on the
battlefield. Photo courtesy of US Army.

“dynamic balancing behavior” (DBB).
DBB is how the robot hopes to balance
itself on the balls of its “ankles.” In
fact, the production model should be
able to remain upright whether balancing on its ankles, knees, or hips.

It has already demonstrated the
ability to pick up a realistically weighted
human dummy and carry it around for
50 minutes without a break. According
to Vecna, the purpose of the bear head
is to comfort soldiers who might be
put off by the otherwise “grotesque”
appearance of the machine.

New Robotics Conference

If you’re working on robotics at

the design level, you may be interested
in the upcoming IEEE International
Conference on Technologies for Practical
Robot Applications (TePRA). It’s a new
conference “aimed at catalyzing the
development of enabling technologies
and encouraging their adoption by robot
designers.” It’s intended to be a cross
between a dry academic conference
and an industrial trade show, so you
get an emphasis on practical
applications coupled with technical
presentations aimed at future
applications. The stated goals are

“to expose robot designers to new
enabling tools, techniques, and
technologies” and “to expose tool,
technique, and technology developers
to the needs of robot designers.”

The event is scheduled for
November 10th and 11th at the
Holiday Inn Select Hotel, Woburn,
MA. For details, visit
www.ieee
robot-tepra.org.

Dragonfly V. 3

In July, the Delft University of
Technology (
www.tudelft.nl) introduced the third version of its artificial
dragonfly, the DelFly Micro micro air
vehicle (MAV). Weighing only 3 g and

The DelFly Micro MAV.
Photo courtesy of Delft U.

with a wingspan of only 10 cm, it
flies by flapping its wings like an
insect. The remote-controlled device is
intended to be used someday for
observation flights in dangerous or
difficult to reach areas, and it already
can be equipped with a tiny 0.5 g
camera that transmits TV-quality
images to a ground station. Given
that it can fly continuously for only
about 3 min (at 5 m/s), it obviously
isn’t ready for commercial production.
But Micro is just a stepping stone to
the planned DelFly Nano ( 5 cm, 1 g),
which will be able to move independently using image recognition
software, hover like a hummingbird,
and even fly backwards. SV

Announcing the Gears Heavy Metal Robot Kit
Designed for Students and Professionals